Bajaj Auto accused of misleading consumers about safety of Qute

Today,
the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) released safety ratings
for the RE60 Qute, the first Indian-made ‘quadricycle’ manufactured by Bajaj
Auto Ltd. Scoring only one out of a possible five stars, the Qute did not fare
well.

In fact, according to Euro NCAP, drivers of the Qute face “serious risks
in collisions with other vehicles or obstacles”.This flies in the face of public statements the
manufacturer has made about the quadricycle’s safety.

Consumers Association of India (CAI) is calling on
Bajaj to go back to the drawing board and produce a safe vehicle, rather than misleading
and endangering consumers with false claims.

Quadricycles,
a category of vehicle defined as light-weight, four-wheeled and with small
engines, have been in circulation in Europe for years, though they have remained
a somewhat niche product.

Although often identical in appearance to small cars,
they do not have to comply with the same safety standards. After a number of
years in development, in 2015 Bajaj Auto officially unveiled India’s first
quadricycle, in the hope of attracting urban dwellers looking to trade up their
motorcycles, or in search of a cheaper alternative to traditional small cars.

However, despite officially launching, the Qute is yet to hit Indian city roads
after public interest litigations were filed in various state courts,
challenging the strength of new government safety standards that would apply to
the new vehicle class. The legal wrangling resulted last year in a stay on
introducing this new type of vehicle in India, which has been upheld by the Supreme
Court while it considers the issue.

Bajaj
responded to these events by launching a major publicity blitz to “free the
Qute”, highlighting the vehicle’s supposed safety credentials to counter
concerns. However, today’s less than glowing endorsement by a leading safety
agency casts a number of doubts about these claims. For example, in one
advertorial, Bajaj Auto claims that the Qute is “perhaps the safest…4-wheeler
anywhere in the world”. In addition, the ‘Free the Qute’ website states that
the “Qute is truly the safest vehicle for everybody on city roads”.

According
to Consumers
Association of India (CAI), Euro NCAP’s crash test results have
unequivocally disproved these claims. By misleading consumers in this way,
Bajaj have violated consumers’ fundamental right to the facts they need to make
informed choices.

Not only that, the company is putting lives at risk, and
introducing the Qute in its current form would only add to the already tragic
death toll on Indian roads. Consumers Association of India (CAI) and other
consumer organizationswill be writing to Rajiv
Bajaj, the company’s Managing Director, this week to urge him to remove all
claims about the Qute’s safety from websites and other corporate
communications, and to re-design the quadricycle so that it offers real
protection to consumers.

Ms.
Swathy Satyamurti, Director Projects, Consumers Association of India said, “we
will be writing to Bajaj to ask them to remove all misleading statements from
public sphere and not to make any more false claims, and instead to re-design
the Qute with enhanced safety features.
Bajaj must also re-submit the Qute for independent crash testing, and
not begin selling the vehicle to consumers until it has received a clean bill
of health.

Bajaj
has also highlighted that the Qute is already on sale in Europe (Turkey, to be
precise), having met mandatory European safety requirements. However, [your organisation]
believes it is misleading to imply that this means the vehicle is safe. Euro
NCAP has tested eight models of quadricycle since 2014, and while all these
vehicles were found to comply with European legislation, none of them scored
more than two out of five stars.

Indeed, this growing body of evidence has led
Euro NCAP to call for a regulatory overhaul in Europe.

With
interest in quadricycles growing in a number of countries, experts are also
calling for new international standards to be developed for this vehicle
segment. David Ward, Director General of
Global NCAP said, “Quadricycles have significant potential for sales in markets
across the world and it’s essential that minimum safety standards are put in
place and that consumers are made aware of their safety shortcomings,
especially when compared with similarly sized passenger cars.We will be urging
action on quadricycle safety through effective regulation in the UN World Forum
for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations.”

India has
the world’s worst road safety record. It is therefore important to create
awareness among consumers about crash test results in order to promote a
culture of safety in vehicles. Please visit www.caiindia.org to learn
more about our activities.

Euro NCAP test results.

Full
details of the Euro NCAP crash tests, including pictures and video, are
available atwww.euroncap.com

Euro
NCAP organizes crash tests on new vehicles and provides motoring consumers with
a realistic and independent assessment of the safety performance of some of the
most popular cars sold in Europe.

Established in 1997 and backed by several
European Governments, motoring, consumer and insurance organizations, Euro NCAP
has rapidly become a catalyst for encouraging significant safety improvements
to new car

Global
NCAP is an independent UK registered charity serving as the global platform for
new car assessment programmes worldwide. Global NCAP has consultative status
with the United Nations (ECOSOC), is a member of the United Nations Road Safety
Collaboration and the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety. Global NCAP
supports the UN Global Goals and Decade of Action for Road Safety.

The crash
testing of quadricycles has been made possible through funding from Bloomberg
Philanthropies. Visit Global NCAP’s website: www.globalncap.org